


nostalgias of another life

by kitseybarbours



Category: The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Canon Relationships, Established Relationship, F/M, Infidelity, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2015-06-29
Packaged: 2018-04-06 17:37:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4230807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitseybarbours/pseuds/kitseybarbours
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Boris is in New York; Kitsey is not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nostalgias of another life

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [Wild Orphan](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/wild-orphan/comments/) by Allen Ginsberg. Characters belong of course to Donna Tartt.

*****

The New York City night is cold and starless and Theo Decker’s hair is wet: post-shower, sandy curls sticking dark to his forehead. He stands, silhouetted in the beam of warm light escaping from the half-open sliding door, on the cramped balcony of his apartment. Theo blows a cloud of cigarette smoke up into the sky and watches it dissipate. He shivers with the breeze; shutting his eyes, he draws his dressing gown tighter around himself.

 _His dressing gown_ _:_ navy silk, eight-hundred-fifty-dollar price tag, gift from Kitsey: last Christmas, their first Christmas together. For her he’d picked out, from Hobie’s shop, an eighteenth-century gold necklace that she (graciously) pretended to like. It was beautiful on its own; he’d been drawn to it the moment he saw it. But when she wore it the first (and last) time, Theo could see then that it was all wrong; the gold too burnished, too heavy on her porcelain skin. Kitsey floats; it weighed her down.

 _Kitsey_.

Her name over and over in his head like a bird pecking at a window. _Kitsey Kitsey Kitsey Kitsey._

Theo has left someone waiting for him in the sprawling Victorian bed, just through the sliding doors. The bedroom is warm and lit golden at midnight, a refuge from the damp chill of winter, and Theo has left someone comfortably tucked between six-hundred-threadcount bamboo sheets in a tasteful shade of gray (picked out by Kitsey, of course).

Someone. A body Theo knows as well as his own. _Better, even_. How many nights?

It’s not Kitsey waiting.

*****

“Potter,” comes the familiar, peculiarly-accented drawl from behind him: lazy, slightly drunk. Satisfied. _Boris._

“Come to bed, you fool. You will catch cold, your hair all wet like that.”

Theo turns. He goes back inside and slides the door shut behind him, closing out the cold.

*****

It’s their last night together — a long weekend, but it’s almost over. Earlier, they opened a bottle of good scotch and talked Solzhenitsyn, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. In front of the fire, Boris kissed Theo’s neck and murmured something about the old days.

Theo takes off his dressing gown. In bed, he lights a cigarette. Boris takes a drag. Ash falls on the bedspread — Theo grimaces, hears Kitsey’s voice in his head. _Not in here, darling, please!_

(They don’t even live together. Kitsey hates his apartment, though she’d never say it aloud. And still: _Don’t smoke in the bedroom, Theo; the smoke’ll get in to all the sheets, the lovely sheets!)._

“She’ll be back tomorrow morning,” Theo murmurs, lost in thought. Kitsey’s text from earlier (received while Boris was in the shower, singing, badly, Polish opera to himself) has crossed his mind. Glittering with exclamation marks, the obligatory _“I miss you”_ surrounded by six heart symbols; and somewhere in the frilliness, _“back tomorrow – elevenish sound okay?? love you!!!”_

 _(Miss you too. Elevenish sounds great. Love you, xo:_ his reply, typed and sent in the neat thirty seconds before he made up his mind, swung his legs off the bed and went to join Boris in the shower, if only to shut him up).

Theo's cigarette has nearly burnt down to his fingertips and he casts about for somewhere to stub it out, settling for dropping it in to the dregs of his whisky. He looks to Boris, expectant.

“I can be gone in morning. No problem,” Boris says with a lopsided grin. He checks his watch — that ridiculous, diamond-studded, overpriced thing — and looks up, mournful. “Oops — is morning now, Potter,” he says solemnly. “We have been bad boys.” Then he shrugs, slow, Russianate: _what can you do?_

Theo becomes aware that he’s exhausted. “Bed, then.”

He shifts in the mammoth bed, pulls the covers over his bare torso; reaches out to tug the lamp cord before taking off his glasses and laying them folded on the nightstand. In the dark Boris moves closer to him, and Theo nestles into his arms, Boris’ chest pressed to his back. How many nights, in Vegas, had he awoken from nightmares to find himself in Boris’ arms, just like this, feeling safe for the first time in years?

(The only palpable difference is the cold weight of the Rolex on Boris’ left wrist. Theo smiles absurdly to himself. _Ridiculous)._

Boris yawns. He presses an absent kiss to Theo’s still-wet curls and says drowsily “Goodnight, Potter.”

*****

True to his word, Boris is gone well before Kitsey gets home. He disentangles himself from Theo’s sleeping weight sometime around dawn, stopping to scribble a goodbye note —  _See you, Potter, thanks for the good whisky_  — before collecting and dressing himself in his scattered clothing from the day before. Theo wakes briefly and sees, with myopic and sleep-heavy eyes, the blur of him leaving. The front door clicks shut and Theo falls promptly back asleep.

*****

Kitsey gets home, in fact, three hours later than planned. She texts around lunchtime —  _just leaving now traffic is awful so sorry darling see you soon!!!!!!!,_ with four kiss faces and a sparkly-heart emoji — and Theo regrets Boris’ early departure. He takes the sheets down to be laundered: they smell of Boris’ cologne and cigarette smoke and sweat.

*****

Traffic was fine. Kitsey was lying.

She’d been held up by breakfast in bed with Tom Cable, at the Hamptons house she'd told Theo her friend Emily owned. She’d mixed and drunk three mimosas and was sleepy-giggly on the ride home; back at the apartment she, Francie and Emily share, she’d quickly changed clothes — out of Tom’s sweater, into the vintage peacoat Theo bought her. And then Tom’d called her a cab and kissed her goodbye, and now here she is, knocking on Theo’s door, falling into his arms and kissing his cheeks and gushing and cooing about _the loveliest time, really, such a fun girls’ weekend — we’re thinking of doing it again next week, too! Em says hello, and Lauren too, and…_

Theo tunes her out.

That night: “Oh, you changed the sheets! I was meaning to ask you to do that, you know.” A kiss dropped at the corner of his mouth. He reaches for her out of habit; she snuggles in automatically. She is thinking of Tom. He is thinking of Boris. _I need a cigarette._

They fall asleep locked in each other’s arms: an unacknowledged feeling of mutual imprisonment. 

*****

**Author's Note:**

> Upon second reading of the book (roughly nine months after writing this, ten after first reading), I've remembered that Theo still lives at Hobie’s, not at his own place, and that Boris is unique in _not_ wearing a flashy Rolex; but at this point, those details are just gonna stay. Apologies for the (yes, minor) inaccuracies. :)


End file.
